


Hungry Ghosts

by kusuriurikun



Series: Shibuya Continuum [3]
Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Cats, Food, Gen, Offerings, Pre-Canon, Refs to (Canonical) Multiverses/AUs, Seeing (Quasi)Dead People
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26187781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kusuriurikun/pseuds/kusuriurikun
Summary: Ken Doi has run his family's ramen shop for years, and he does his best to feed the souls as well as the bellies of Shibuya's residents.Even if those residents aren't necessarily human or still living.
Relationships: Doi Ken & Higashizawa Yodai, Doi Ken & Minamimoto Sho
Series: Shibuya Continuum [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902298
Comments: 3
Kudos: 20





	Hungry Ghosts

At nights, Ken Doi gives some fish to the cats.

Cats are luck, so it’s said; three-coloured cats especially so, and he’d always been taught by his father that it was good to keep the cats on your side if you wanted good business; the cats would lead the customers in, beckoning.

He’d never seen an actual beckoning cat in the flesh, but he does what he can to keep the local population of strays happy--they certainly reduced the rat population, at least--and so late at night, when everyone else has left (even the salarymen working themselves to an early grave), Ken Doi sets out some fish for the cats.

* * *

During the days, Ken Doi sets out ramen for Shibuya, for both the living and the dead.

He knows both come in here. His father could see how both the living and the dead came in; taught him the methods of marking the restaurant as a friendly place for those in the otherworld, and allowing this to be one of those places where the border between the worlds thinned just enough where the dead and the living could both enjoy the simple pleasures of life.

For Ken Doi, the old ritual of occasionally setting bowls out for the dead who (for a little while) walked among the living had gotten a bit more personal over the years.

He’d see people come in--and sometimes he’d not notice them by their presence being a bit greyer, but by their absence. (So it was when he noticed the eccentric kid with the math books who’d hang out in a corner who’d been a regular had suddenly _stopped_ showing up, and he’d heard later he’d actually been hit and killed crossing the road by an inattentive driver of a garbage truck.)

Sometimes he’d hear of deaths after they’d left his place, too. His old cookstaff-in-training Higashizawa--he’d actually really applied himself, then got accepted into culinary school, was apologetic as he gave his notice but Doi understood. He’d hoped the big guy could make his dreams come true of being famous, despite Yodai having developed a real interest in French cuisine…

...so it was really painful to hear a few years later that Yodai Higashizawa, the gentle giant he knew who just wanted to make everyone happy by cooking, had been cut down in his prime by (of all things) a slip, fall, and an exceptionally unfortunate tumble in the kitchen.

Sometimes, after everyone leaves but before he feeds the cats, he ponders putting out ramen...but he knows if Yodai Higashizawa was going to show, he would have shown up by now.

And Ken Doi goes out and feeds fish to the cats.

* * *

Sometimes Ken Doi dreams of things going a bit--no, _very_ differently in one way, and much the same in another.

He dreams of a reality--not the one he’s in--where he and Yodai Higashizawa actually do their crazy idea of making a tabletop game for kids (and _they_ actually create Tin Pin and bring it to market)--and it catches on, catches on like _crazy_ , and their parting isn’t over questions of whether to do ramen or quiche lorraine, but on whether to keep their Tin Pin thing as an indie game company or actually sell the rights to a major producer with an actual budget.

He dreams of a reality--not the one he’s in--where he managed to get the eccentric maths-obsessed kid under his wing; gave him the father figure the kid desperately needed. And while the kid tried so hard (and often _failed_ so hard--trying to make his own Pins, making his own “experimental” recipes)...well, sometimes he'd really apply himself, and in those times Doi was convinced that Minamimoto kid was going to be able to do whatever he set himself to do...with some appropriate direction, of course.

Ken Doi wakes up from that glimpse of another world, and he has tears in his eyes as he realizes he could save neither of them, and he gathers himself together, and he sets out ramen for Shibuya, for both the living and the dead.

* * *

One night, Ken Doi sets out fish for the cats, and he hears something--almost like the lid of a trash can falling, or a skittering on a tin roof.

For a moment, he looks behind him, and for just a moment he swears he sees the _kid_ he remembers from this life from years back sitting surly in a corner, and in his dreams of another world trying so _very_ hard to be Excessively Helpful.

He blinks, and the Minamimoto kid is gone, and Ken Doi is not entirely sure what he’s seen.

* * *

The next day, as he always does, Ken Doi serves ramen to Shibuya, to both the living and the dead.

The next night, he serves fish to the cats, and the kid he remembers last seeing alive close to a decade ago is there again--and Ken Doi notices the kid looks rather more feral, more feline, than he remembers.

He sees the strange apparition who looks like the Minamimoto kid disappear again, but not before the feral stranger sticks a black finger in the bonito flakes Ken Doi has sprinkled on the cat’s fish.

* * *

The next night, Ken Doi sets out fish for the cats, and a bowl of shoyu ramen for what he is relatively sure now is the dead, with a message of _This is on the house._

He turns around, and he sees the Minamimoto kid has the bowl, and the kid (who now has a black flame-job sleeve tattoo on his left arm and other tattoos vaguely resembling whiskers or tabby markings) tips his hat and grins as if to say _thanks_ before chowing down.

* * *

On the fourth night--and for every night thereafter, until the string of four nights arrives where the bowl is left untouched--from this point forward, Ken Doi’s daily ritual changes just a bit.

In the morning, he gathers himself, and he serves ramen to Shibuya, to both the living and the dead.

At night, he offers fish to the cats, and a bowl of ramen to a hungry ghost.

Whilst Ken Doi couldn’t save Sho Minamimoto in life, he knows he can at least give him something comforting in his afterlife.

And while the dreams he has of the other world where things worked out _differently_ still hurt, and he knows that reality is not his own...maybe a little ramen will make them both feel better.

**Author's Note:**

> One of those little drabbles that (again) came into my head at too-early-thirty in the morning, and actually made me cry a bit thinking of it...so figure I’d share with the class.
> 
> This particular one I dedicate to Seb and to everyone else who believes Sho deserved better in the end. (And honestly, the whole Another Day scenario _hurts_ me thinking of it despite being a ridiculous PokeYugiDigiBlade Shonen GameWorld scenario; it’s a glimpse of what _could_ have been, if Sho’d had friends and supportive people and had, you know, not died.) Also dedicated to everyone who ever appreciated Ramen Dad in general.
> 
> This fic does play a bit on a particular bit of fanon based on Another Day (specifically, that the Sho in that world--”Dr. Pin”--is Ken Doi’s kid); I’ll admit my personal headcanon is that Doi effectively adopted Sho in that verse ( _de facto_ if not necessarily _de jure_ ). This is totally not at all based on me having folks who served as “foster parental figures” growing up when my own parental units were abusive, and my own local friends being my own “found family”...
> 
> (It’s _totally_ based on that.)
> 
> As a side note--yeah, there's now enough in this particular "writing verse" I've up and made a series for it; the name is a bit of a mathematical pun based on the the concept of the [continuum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_\(topology\))\--specifically a compact, connected space; a good description of how I see the increasing number of fics in this branch working together.


End file.
